bahua dot com

The weekend was a lot of fun. We drank lots of beer, saw two concerts, ate some Chubby's, and all inflicted lasting pain on ourselves with our hangovers. I had a great time, and happily anticipate the next visit anyone pays. To celebrate today, and Lord of the Rings sweeping the Oscars, I called in sick to work, to get some rest, and nurse a hellacious sore throat.

I have mentioned before that I was sitting on some potential news, and that when it became final, I'd let you, the internet public, know about it. Well, that day's today. I was offered a Linux system administration job with an IT company called Anteon. It will involve a good deal of domestic, and a bit of international travel, more money, and more room for me to make decisions and challenge myself with new and more difficult problems and situations. Geoff, with whom I used to work, referred me, and will be getting some kind of sleazy bonus. He is also moving about one block away, which means that most of the time, we'll be able to carpool again. I guess I'd better go get legitimate with my license, and fix my tire.

I'll start on March 22nd, and my last day, here at Sprint, will be March 16th, just in time to have a good time on St. Patrick's Day in Kansas City. Until that time, I need to finish whatever projects I have open, or turn them over to other people on my team, and keep coming into work no later than 9am.

Brian and I went down to the Crossroads district last night, for First Friday, and had a good time. We started off with dinner and drinks at Manny's, and then wandered from gallery to gallery, drinking wine after complimentary wine. The last gallery we went to was adjacent to a cafe of some kind that, upon closer scrutiny in memory, was probably a private party. There were a couple of guys playing guitars, and one guy alternating between guitar and violin. We walked in, and didn't see anyone giving out drinks, and evidently, we had looks of confusion on our faces because of this. Drawn by our confused looks, a guy approached us and asked us if we were looking for something in particular. Brian said(rather quickly, in my opinion), "Beer."

We exchanged some more confused looks with this guy, whose name turned out to be Trevor, and another guy, named Tom, who I am pretty sure was Trevor's father, interjected, "Do we need more beer?" "No," Trevor said. "These guys just want some beer." "Well, what are you waiting for," asked Tom. They then outfitted us with some tasty beers, and we sat down to enjoy them, and the music that was being played. It turns out Tom thought that we were friends of Trevor, and when he found out we weren't, he seemed no less willing to give us beer. As First Friday gets more popular, I hope that this kind of friendliness stays with it.

We walked over to Jilly's, at that point, and enjoyed some two-dollar pints of Leinie's Red. It was a very agreeable night.

The last couple days at Sprint are passing quickly for me. I need to do a couple of writeups on things that I have written, so they can be taken over by other people, but otherwise, the workload has been relatively light. The question everyone asks me is, "So, are you excited?" So, here's an all-encompassing, "yes," to all of you who might read this site, and haven't asked yet. The midday temperatures have been hanging in the upper fifties and lower sixties, so it looks like winter's behind us. We still have some rain to get through, but luckily, I'm on call for it. I guess I'd better head to work.

I was just chatting with one of the older guys on our team, and it came up in conversation that he grew up in Iowa. I asked him, when he started walking away, "Where in Iowa," and he said he grew up on a farm just south of Waterloo. I replied that I have friends from Raymond and Dysart, and he elaborated that he was officially from Laporte City, and went to school in Raymond with my friend's dad, Kenny. I then mentioned that I went to school in Dubuque, and he started naming people and places he knows there. Alex, in whose cube we were having this discussion, turned around and yelled to our boss, across the aisle, "Thad, get these Iowans out of my cube!"

It's my last day, here at Sprint. They'll be by to pick up my pager, and officially disavow any knowledge of me, sometime a little later. Until then, I guess I should remove suspicious files from my laptop, and uninstall any "non-Sprint" software I have so rebelliously installed. It feels odd, being here for what I know is the last time. It kind of feels like every day, except that I'm wearing more casual clothes.

I have enjoyed this job- don't get me wrong -but I will be happy to leave the meddling managerial policies, the overarching invincible hand of HR, the tiny, "prorated" payraises, the incompetent 40-year olds who make three times what I make, the late oncall hours, and the miles and miles of red tape involved in doing anything, within this company. I will miss, however, the people with whom I work, and for whom I work, the work that I do, the confidence that my coworkers have in me, riding the bus to work, defying standards with better faster solutions, and Buttercrumbcakes.

Farewell, Sprint. I wish you the best of luck, but I don't think it'll find you.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I have been recommended a great filesharing program, called Soulseek, which, among many other features, sports download resumes, queue listings, bandwidth throttling/restricting, and a huge userbase. Thanks a lot for the link, lev.

St. Patrick's day was a lot of fun, and as I expected, I was wrecked by 8 PM. I never really got drunk, but I could sleep at the drop of a hat, by that time. We started with a delicious breakfast at the Cup and Saucer, and met up with Geoff and Joel before we headed over to the parade line-up. The Parade was lots of fun, and there seemed to be around 200,000 people or so, there. Good turnout for a Wednesday, anyway. We went to Harry's Country Club after that, and moved on from bar to bar, until we found ourselves at Fooleries, where Brian and I called it quits and caught the next bus home.

Now, I spend a couple of days happily unemployed, varnishing my new coffee table, and eating too much.

Kathleen is in town, this weekend, along with our cousin June, from St. Louis. While Brian was at work last night, Kathleen, June, and I went over to the River Market for dinner and a beer. As we were walking back to the apartment, we passed the Phoenix. "Do you guys want to step inside, and see how it is," I asked. We went in, and wound up listening to live jazz and blues until closing time. Over the course of this time, I drank way too much wine. One burrito and a night's sleep later, all's well.

Welcome to bahua dot com, at its new home in an Atlanta datacenter. The DNS changes are certainly taking a while to propagate, allowing bahua dot com to resolve to its new home, so until then, I guess you can look at bahua dot net instead.

Okay, so it looks like the site is visible from where I live, on the internet, now. I have had some time to sit around, while my new employer renovates the building where I'll be working, to accomodate the 30+ computers over which I will soon have godlike powers. In the meantime, I am to get a bunch of HR forms filled out, and stay on top of my email, which piles up to a whopping four or five messages a day. Also, FYI, bahua dot com operates on Eastern time now. I think you will, nevertheless, appreciate the more speedy and reliable rendering of the stammerings on this webpage.

I have a quiet weekend at home, and it looks like the bahua dot com conversion issues have pretty much subsided. I received my work laptop yesterday, and spent a good deal of today getting it configured. I write this entry from that machine. Perhaps, when I'm not late for a dinner get-together, I'll describe the laptop.

Yeah, so, nobody can see this, because csoft's dns servers decided to forget that this domain exists. For those of you who are resourceful enough to view this page as bahua dot net, welcome, and dot com will be back up at some point. I close, with "Dammit."